Brunsviga
The Brusvinga device finds its roots in the arithmometer developed by Willgodt Theophil Odhner (1845–1905),[1][2] a Swedish engineer who emigrated to Russia for work purposes in 1868 or 1869 after having studied mechanics at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.
The patent included distribution rights in Germany, Belgium and Switzerland[5] and the calculating machines were launched under the brand's name "Brunsviga", in reference to the city of Braunschweig, where the firm Grimme & Natalis was based.
[1] Some machines were now able to perform simultaneously multiple operations (not more than three), as did the Trinks-Triplex,[6] launched shortly before World War I whose 19 typing levers could display results as long as 20 numbers.
In 1906, Brunsviga's sales agents were based in London, Paris, Stockholm, Conception, Buenos Aires, São Paulo and Johannesburg.
[3] In 1931, adding to the 30 offices in Germany, 90 more opened their doors in foreign countries[3] In 1909, the company introduced the tagline "the brain of steel" alongside an illustration from fellow Brunswick native mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss.
[3] Alongside marketing strategies, the firm made use of specialized magazines[10] as well as the press to promote the use of calculating machines: the Manchester Guardian for instance, showed an image of a worker with his Brunsviga.
For the twenty year's anniversary of Brunsviga in 1912, a brochure was published under the title When calculating machines have a heart, whose author, Fritz Müller later republished it as a short story.
[12] The painter and graphist from Brunswick, Karl Bock (1873–1940), created the cover of the brochure while Austrian artist August Mandlick (1860–1934) took care of the illustrations.
[3] Lastly, the writer Abraham Halberthal (1881–1969), under the pseudonym A. Halbert, published short stories in the company monthly magazine to present the calculating machine.
Amongst them, Enrico Fermi used it at the very beginning of his work on nuclear chain reaction,[13] also Karl Pearson,[14] Stephen Wilson'[15] and Sydney Holt.
